HP has plans to begin shipping some very beefy workstations soon, increasing their hardware profile to include dual quad-core Xeons sitting inside a tiny little box. The xw/6600 and xw/8600 as they are called can sport up to 8 cores and will have ample room for expansion of other hardware, such as more RAM than you could ever need and up to 5TB of storage inside.

Practicality is always a concern when it comes to workstations so configuration options are key here, and the “low end” of these beasts will begin at a moderate price tag of $1200. For a full 8 cores and 128GB of RAM, expect to pay a lot more.

Even with dual-core processors being so readily available and low-cost, single-core workstations are still considered the norm. Given that, it's surprising HP would seek to offer 8-core workstations, though obviously they'd be aimed only at customers who could actually make use of such power. Is there more of a market for a dual or higher core workstation? I don't imagine the typical office desktop is in dire need of processing power, but for people using CAD programs or other such resource-heavy applications I can see a potential fit.